“Christmas is hard,” says Mele. “My family is big enough to feed, and then my cousins and their children come, my aunties, my uncles, my mother, and my mother’s mother! They all come and say ‘Aunty Mele, what’s for Christmas dinner?’!”
“Last year Christmas wiped out all of our money – all of it – and the children hardly got any presents. So I said to my husband, ‘we’re going to get some budgeting advice’!”
“My budget adviser was great – I got some great advice! I wanted to do a Christmas hamper, but my budget adviser showed me that saving with my local supermarket worked out cheapest. I wanted to have some fun when the family was here and my budget adviser suggested some fun free things to do, like beach cricket! Get my fat cousin Henry to chase the ball!” Mele laughs.
“We also talked about presents. This year our children have a spending limit of $25. Still, five times $25 plus me and my husband is almost $200! Yikes! It was good that my budget adviser got us to put some money into a Christmas fund each week. A few more weeks and we’ll have enough for presents.”
“Last year Christmas completely wiped us out,” Mele says, “but this Christmas we’ve saved for everything and we won’t be in trouble afterwards.”
